Competitive strategy skirmish game for all skill levels | Classic fantasy | 1-4 players | 45 min/player
Latest Updates from Our Project:
We're printing the game!
16 days ago
– Tue, Nov 05, 2024 at 07:18:24 AM
Brrh, click – clatter – clunk. This is the sound of files printing, folks!
We've now surpassed all hurdles leading to this long-awaited moment. The presses are about to be fully engaged, mixing and pouring Boardquest's brand colors: vintage gold, rich black, demon-red, orkish-green, human-blue, and elven-brown over humongous sheets of paper.
There is more.
We are beyond proud to present our complete set of 35 miniatures:
That's a lot of minis! We are in awe with how they turned out: the colors are deep and the details are crisp. Every faction feels harmonic and unique. Big thanks to Luis and his team from Miniaturas Alemany for their hard work on this assignment. They have truly gone the extra mile for us, caring for the success of this project as much as we do.
Some close-up shots of all factions:
Humans: Mounted Knight, Gregor the Mighty, Warrior Monk, Acher
Mounted Knight (close-up)
Orcs: Orc Shikari, Bilar Crosschain, Orc Warrior, and Orc RIder
Demons: Demon Beast, Raegar Demon Lord, Dark Mistress, Bloodsucker
Dark Mistress (close-up)
It's going to be sooo much fun to play with those!
95% of the miniatures are ready. Because of a tiny misalignment between our teams we need to re-do Raegar, the demon lord, which should take us until the end of this week. Early next week all minis will be securely delivered to the AGRpriority facilities for final box tests and packing! Everything is nicely coming together.
There are many exciting updates on the video game development front, too: we're wrapping up the game for the official release. Both campaigns, Defenders of Liria and Scourge of Liria are ready and have gone through multiple QA rounds with our keen (and very patient - thank you!) group of testers. The video game, being a multi-media product, allows us to introduce additional features that will get you fully immersed in the word of Liria: a fitting soundtrack, visual effects for the spells, dialogs. Friendly monsters may come to your aid – and some will be available to recruit... We will stop there and let you discover all additional content yourselves.
The video game will be released for early access on December 6th, 2024. All video game backers will receive a Steam code on the day.
For those late to the campaign, you can purchase the video game through our pre-order store. There are still some board games and the last few miniature boxes available as well. Whilst you won't be able to take advantage of any Early Birds or Bundle offers, the price is still below what we plan to sell the game for in the future. The miniature boxes are not planned for re-release after the stock runs out.
How are we doing in terms of delivery timelines? For one, the video game will be ready for release before Christmas, as promised. The board game production has taken a little longer than expected, summer holidays and the miniature box redesign have set us back by over a month. We are confident that our European and Australian backers will get their orders for Christmas. Boxes heading to US and Canada most likely will hit the holiday slog and arrive at your door in January. This is because all European orders will be sent by plane / truck while the boxes to North America are traveling on a ship container that takes a while to schedule.
We're hoping that this update has brightened your day a little. We are very happy of the project's progress so far. Thank you for your ongoing support.
Behsaad & Iwona
Minis are out of the oven! And other production updates...
2 months ago
– Thu, Sep 19, 2024 at 04:23:08 AM
Hi folks, it's been a while! Thank you all for your messages and questions while we were out – we also had some late pledges come in, every one of which is highly appreciated! We're glad to hear that you like what you're seeing.
As expected, August has been a slow month – with our main manufacturers closed for holidays, the production did not advance much. Now in September everything resumed at full speed and at last we have a few things to share!
Miniatures
Alemany Miniatures are on track with delivering all 17.500 (!!!) minis to us by the end of September/first week of October. The team is currently occupied with bringing the monster collection to life and sent us some copies that they've already produced:
As you know, all of our minis come in color, so that in case you do not want to paint them yourself, you won't end up with a box of sadly looking generic-grey figures. It's also a cornerstone of accessibility: you only need to quickly scan the map to understand who's who and what's the power balance. Working with color brings on some challenges, however. For example, the anthracite used for monsters had to go through a few iterations. Too much black pigment was making the minis too fragile, so Luis and the team spent a couple of days experimented with tones and plastic types. Every time we switch the color tone, the SiOCAST machines need to be cleaned so no color aberrations occur. To make this process time efficient we'll be producing the figures faction by faction (i.e., color by color).
Board game print
AGRpriority has had an unexpected shortage of staff which impacted the pace of production for all clients. The good news is that we went over the hurdle of the designing the mini box – at last! We will be steadily progressing with the print in the upcoming weeks. The boxes will be printed at the end, once we have all minis – we need to make a final test to confirm that everything fits.
Video game development
There has been a lot of progress on the video game development this month. The biggest feature we've pushed out must be the Map Creator. This month's update extends the capability to PvE mode, so that when you're playing against the computer, it can make smart decisions as to where it will place its map pieces!
We've also released some important UI & UX updates. To give you an idea of some of them, the map is now highlighting viable tiles for the Fort placement and the End Turn button will be highlighted once no more actions remain. You can save and load your saves (applies to the campaign mode only). You can equip an item when another one is equipped without manually removing it first, and the two will switch places. We're spotting small things and fixing them as we go. We've also introduced a day-night cycle to add ambience to the gameplay.
It's coming together very nicely. Here's a recording of a complete PvP session where you can observe the current state of the game:
Behind the scenes there is also a lot of painstaking work of making all menus look the same and finish the migration from the UI framework that we used initially.
Other news
While we've patiently – if not anxiously – waited for the production to recommence, it seemed about time to organize another in-person tournament!
Held in Play Planet Malaga once again, we've had a blast. Martin – representing the Orcs – has once again claimed the Liria's crown, having slayed the Humans (led by Tamara) in the final round. Thank you to all the participants and we hope to see you all soon!
Orcs, Humans, Demons, and Elves meet at last! (4-player free-for-all setup)
That's all for this month, folks. It's a slow process and while setbacks do happen, all teams are committed to have the game out and we're still on track for the shipment in November. In our next update you will get a first look of the complete mini set and hopefully the first sneak peak of the game print!
Iwona & Behsaad
Production Updates
4 months ago
– Fri, Jul 26, 2024 at 12:46:54 AM
Hello folks, we're back with a handful of production updates.
Miniature Production Updates
The miniature production is steadily progressing: we're at 10% completion. Our Spanish provider, Alemany Miniatures have sent us the full – albeit sample – set of miniatures. We held the entire collection in our hands for the first time ever! 35 figures make for an impressive set when you lay them out!
The Kickstarter Exclusive Minotaur mini
The mountain troll: scary as ever!
The process of miniature production is a steep curve in terms of effort. The minis require a fair amount preparation before they can be produced on scale. The first step is producing the initial copies with 3D printers: those so called masters serve for creating the mold beds. Sometimes, after a 3D print, we may catch issues that would break the plastic injection. In those cases the problematic miniature gets a fix and a reprint. We're passed this stage with all minis approved. Currently, the team is focused on getting the molds ready. We are also starting the color tests: Boardquest figures use 5 colors, all of them custom mixes that take some trial and error before we get them right. Once the molds and the plastic mixes are in place, this is when mass production can start. As communicated before, we are looking at mid/end September for this work to be completed.
Game Manufacturing Updates
In other news, we have decided to keep the game production in house: Boardquest will be manufactured entirely in Spain, with AGRpriority joining as the game production and fulfilment partner. The benefit of keeping everything in the country is huge in terms of freight times. The fulfilment center is next door to the manufacturer: instead of sending the boxes across Europe to then ship them to our international customers, we send them directly the next day once they are packed. The US/Canada clients are unaffected by this change, as Friendly Shipping is still in place. The contract is already signed and the AGR print is reviewing the files for print at the time of this writing.
Delivery Updates
There are some minor delays, too. We we went back to the drawing board to redesign the mini box to ensure that the minis stay intact during international travel. We are considering 3 alternatives that meet our requirements and fit within our budget: currently, we are awaiting the designs from our providers. While this is good news for the players as you will be getting a better product, it impacts the production times. Until we get this locked in, we cannot proceed with the print: the mini box dimensions dictate the size of the main game box and the insert. We're also hitting the holiday period in Spain, which will most likely push the game manufacturing to start in September. Typically, it takes up to 8 weeks to get the order done. With this updated planning, it will get us until November before we can start shipping the games. This is pretty good as our aim has always been to get them out to you before December, so we don't hit the heavy shipping period and you get a nice treat for Christmas!
More photos and production updates in August!
Have a lovely summer!
Iwona & Behsaad
Translations and Production Update
5 months ago
– Sat, Jun 29, 2024 at 01:48:54 AM
Hi folks, we've just reached an enormous milestone: we're starting the production.
The miniature production is already underway and we're expecting the minis to be ready for shipping to the game assembly point in September. We have also accepted the game manufacturing offer and are expecting an unprinted prototype to arrive next week. It's a necessary step to ensure everything fits in the box just fine. Simultaneously, we are kicking off the process of file preparation for print. The elements themselves (cards, boards, maps, tokens, etc.) are ready so the outstanding task is to prepare the master sheets with cutlines for the plotter. Once the files are greenlighted, the print takes about 5 weeks, which should bring us to a similar estimated completion date as the miniatures. After that it's just the assembly and fulfilment!
In other news, we've finished the final rounds of review of our Rulebook and Storybooks in all 3 languages. We're very thankful to Diana (responsible for the game elements and the rulebook) and Maite (responsible for the storybooks) for their incredible work on conveying our vision into Spanish.
In case any of those links stop working in the future, make sure to consult our website for the latest collateral.
We're very proud of what we've achieved: this moment is a culmination of years of work and some very intense last few months to get the game to a production ready state. Big thanks to all our collaborators for always giving their best and to this community for funding our dream.
Behsaad & Iwona
Minis, Translations, and More!
6 months ago
– Wed, May 22, 2024 at 03:50:46 AM
Hi folks, it's been only 3 weeks since we last posted and it's incredible how much has been accomplished during that period of time. The miniature set is complete, the translations are ready, the video game is feature complete. Everything is on track for your game copies to arrive in October / November this year.
Read on for a full summary of what we've been up to in May.
Boom, done! Miniature Set
Starting with the hottest topic: our miniature set is ready for production! We have received the outstanding minis from Franco (Skeleton Knight) and Pedro (Deer Elf); following that, Pedro has done a thorough review of all 26 models and implemented adjustments as needed.
Luis will be taking it from here: the next step involves 3D printing the master copies for creating the molds. If no problems requiring design changes come up during the 3D print then the minis will go straight into batch production.
Ready for battle! All factions and monsters are locked in for print.
Boom, done! German and Spanish Translations
Very exciting news for all our Spanish- and German-speaking backers: the translations of all game elements, the rulebook, and the storybooks are ready! Having the text translated is of course only a part of a bigger picture: it also needs to be adapted for print, which at times requires small adjustments to the designs themselves. There is some great progress on that end as well: Iwona has already completed the German adaptation! She'll be working on the Spanish version next – it should be ready in time for our June update.
This is a massive milestone for us: the video game is feature complete. Everything we promised is there now: a single player campaign; multiplayer; the tutorial. The final updates delivered this month were the map creation and the undo last move button. There's still some polishing to do but we are hoping to be able to release an Early Access version after the summer break – and yes, all of you video game backers are getting it!
Players are now able to create their own map setups
Visual Updates
There's been a bunch of important visual updates that we've implemented over the last month: most importantly, the Progress Track was completely redesigned, the box got a retouch, and the final page of the Rulebook has been converted to Player's Aid. Some of these were on our list for a while and some we have decided to update based on your feedback.
The Progress Board went through a couple of iterations. It's been renamed from Leveling Track to better describe its function in the game, which is tracking your Hero’s XP and Income. We also needed to bump its size a bit and resize the cutouts for the 8mm cube to fit comfortably. Level 5 is now marked on the board; it’s the final possible position you can advance your Hero to. We’re pretty much in love with the final result and hope so are you!
New Progress Boards. Print by Azao Games
Our designers from bRIDA Studio have reworked the box art to better integrate the 4 heroes of Boardquest. It's no easy task as these are all strong personalities that don't necessarily click together ;-) The designers have also hand-made all 3 game titles: along the existing Boardquest: Tales of Liria, we now have Boardquest: Relatos de Liria and Boardquest: Geschichten von Liria.
New box art
At last, by not least – prompted by one of our backers (thanks, Will!) – we decided to incorporate a full page Player's Aid on the back of the rulebook. There's a mini section on the Setup, a reminder on the Game Round and Winning & Losing Conditions, plus an overview of all Map symbols and Status Effects. It's the essence of the game on a single page.
Player's Aid – a better use of the last page of the Rulebook
Online Tournament
Last Sunday, 7 talented commanders faced each other in an online tournament to find out who's the best strategist among them. That title went to Kai who, leading Humans to victory, brought absolute mayhem on all his opponents. Congratulations to everyone that took part!
Tournaments are very gratifying for us, too: it's amazing to see how a real community of a few dozens of players has grown around Boardquest. Rest assured, more tournaments are to be expected in the future: get in touch if you're keen to get on the waitlist for the next one!
BackerKit: last 10 days!
For those of you – the majority – who have already provided their shipping details: thank you and going forward if there is an address update write to us and we'll figure it out.
For those of you who are still on the fence as to whether get a game copy: we hope you do! We are planning to print more games in the future and there's some stock surplus from the KS print available for purchase but note these copies are already priced higher, so this is your last chance of getting the game at the KS price.
It's been a busy, busy May. We are almost there, folks: the game is getting printed this summer. We are hoping to lock the files and minis for print in the next 3 weeks: after that the game will be handed over to our printing partners and later, the fulfilment magicians. We reserved a generous period of 3 months to get the print done, accommodating for potential design adjustments or hitting a printing slog, and just keeping in mind that in the summer everything in Europe goes half the usual speed as most people are away on vacation. We'll be back with another update once everything has been submitted for print so we can celebrate together!
